The portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that is suitable for wireless communications is limited and must be shared worldwide. It’s a measure of how profound a change wireless broadband is making in the modern lifestyle that folks are seriously looking into reallocating bandwidth to meet the swelling demand for wireless connectivity.

Right now the battle in the world of LTE is in the intellectual property arena. Almost everybody that is a player in the market is suing almost everybody else over one patent infringement or another. That battle will resolve itself once enough money changes hands, but there is another battle looming. This emerging battle involves spectrum allocation, aka bandwidth.

The first skirmishes have broken out with LightSquared seeing strong resistance over its planned use of spectrum that the FCC allocated them. It seems that LightSquared’s L-band spectrum is close enough to the frequencies used for GPS that the navigation community feels threatened. The nav folks claim that LightSquared’s plan for its LTE deployment will result in undue and possibly dangerous interference with GPS signals. LightSquared, in turn, claims the GPS equipment vendors have failed to implement required shielding to block such interference. Bandwidth is thus at the core of a conflict that one side sees as a safety issue and the other side sees as threatening its viability as a business.

Folks are also looking around to see what bandwidth might be gleaned from other industries. The IEEE, for instance, has developed standards for using white-space spectrum – the unutilized frequencies left as guard bands between television channels to avoid interference. The IEEE 802.22 standard specifies how radios using those frequencies should operate, and Carlson Wireless is already developing an IP radio to utilize that bandwidth.

There may be more bandwidth re-allocation in the future. With so many folks choosing to stream video, might broadcast television see a reduction in the number of channels available or perhaps fade away altogether? The discontinued channel bandwidth can then become available for wireless broadband. Folks can still get their mindless entertainment, just using their computer to pick up the signal rather than their television tuner.

And as bandwidth demand continues to grow, might there not be a rise in international conflicts with different countries imposing different allocations? After all, electromagnetic waves don’t honor national borders and there could be serious intergovernmental arguments about who gets to use which bandwidth for what.

It may not come to that, though, as we get smarter about using the bandwidth we have. Breakthroughs such as Rice University’s full duplex scheme, which I mention in a previous blog, may come to the rescue. Still, a certain amount of the spectrum now allocated for one purpose will be re-allocated to wireless broadband in the future. After all, the way we communicate is undergoing profound change. It seems only reasonable that we will change the way we apply our limited electromagnetic spectrum resources, as well.